Angel Merkel, Ivanka Trump and Christine Lagarde push the G20 down the right path.

One of the major themes of the Global Foundation’s two recent Rome Roundtables has been the global imperative for women’s economic empowerment to become a reality rather than just a series of platitudes. There are sound economic as well as ethical reasons as to why this should be the case.

Anne Fulwood is Australia’s representative to the W20, the advisory group to the G20 Leaders on women’s economic empowerment, and the W20 is meeting this week in Berlin, with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel as host.

Anne moderated our session on women’s economic empowerment at the Rome Roundtable last January, where we concluded that the global effort is less than adequate and we urged the G20 and other global intergovernmental entities to do much more to turn good intentions into reality.

News from the Berlin W20 meeting suggests that, under Angela Merkel’s leadership and constructive ideas around vocational training, and with the participation of other high-powered women, including Ivanka Trump and Christine Lagarde, a new impetus has emerged and may make a difference.

Read Anne’s piece about the Berlin W20 meeting in the Daily Telegraph here and see her video presentation below.

Here is the official communique from the W20 meeting in Berlin, held 26-28 April 2017. Note that in point 2 emphasises the need for G20 nations to achieve the ’25 by 25′ target that was set at the Brisbane G20 Summit and which, in our statement at the Rome Roundtable to His Holiness, Pope Francis, we said:…’the economic empowerment of women is a most important global goal, and much has been done, yet progress is uneven at best, since the G20 committed to a worthy target two years ago. The G20, too, needs encouragement to honour these and other commitments’.